


In Your Eyes

by misssowinski



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, One Shot, The 'Good' Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27080002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misssowinski/pseuds/misssowinski
Summary: Before the official Court to declare her Primogen, Julia shared one last moment with Qadir.The event is based on the 'good' ending.
Relationships: Julia Sowinski/Qadir al-Asmai
Kudos: 15





	In Your Eyes

One of the biggest perks of being a Lasombra is the inability to see yourself in the mirror, which had been a pain in the ass for Julia since sunset.

Tonight was the night the Court would officially declare her Primogen. But without the ability to shed a reflection, she was unable to fix herself her usual look. She had been staring vacantly at the blank mirror, struggling to sketch her own face in her head.

_The night you’re made Primogen, possibly the best day of your fucking life, you truly have to be reminded you don’t own a reflection, you stupid little cunt._

Conceiving no other options, she pinned her finger on the area between her brow and lid. She attempted to graze black eyeshadow on her lash line with the tip of her brush. It would be as simple as feeling and following the line, she could do this.

But brushes don’t always work the way she imagined. There was no way she could tell the result was messy or not. In the end, she slammed the brush on the dressing table out of frustration. Fine, she would remove this stupid attempt of applying eye make-up and say goodbye to being a goth forever. What is a goth without eyes framed by dark eyeshadow and liner?

_If only Dakota were still here._

She scowled. The realisation she missed having her appearance fixed by her dawned upon her.

A buzz could be heard from the front door. For a second, she wondered who it was because she was planning to head to the Art Hole by herself, but she realised Qadir had arrived to collect her. She cursed to herself for not noticing the time. _Shit, shit, shit!_

When she crashed the door open, a tall, handsome, elegant figure probed her with his usual intense gaze that never left his stern face. It made her feel self-conscious about the mess on one of her eyes.

“Are you ready?”

She wished she could answer, but nothing could come out of her lips. The air between them had been high-strung since that night. Any sense of casualty between them when they were alone had ceased to exist. Their relationship had been restricted to professional boundaries only.

“You’re going to be made Primogen, and you haven’t learned any sense of punctuality, I see.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault I can’t see my own reflection.” she scoffed.

She rushed to her room to erase her eye make-up, then she would leave. Qadir had followed her into her room, watching her struggle preparing herself for the Court. He had never predicted to see this sight considering how unfiltered she was most of the time.

“You’re helpless,” he stated as he approached her.

She shot him an irritated glance. Adding to the list of things that would never change was how he always annoyed her. However, she found herself quite surprised he didn’t add ‘whelp’ behind ‘helpless’.

He decided to pick up her brush and eyeshadow palette much to her astonishment.

“Stay still, close your eyes,” he ordered.

“You’re not going to—”

“Or would you prefer to present yourself in this state in front of the Court?”

She wanted to fling a sharp remark, but she couldn’t object to his offer. She simply couldn’t process the fact Qadir al-Asmai, the holy mighty Sheriff of New York, submitted himself to be her make-up artist tonight without her asking. But the help was what she needed, and she often forgot he is a Toreador.

As he bent lower and forward and pressed his fingers below her brow after he dabbed her brush into her eyeshadow, he attentively stroked the tip of the brush on her eyelid. It was unexpectedly gentle; she was quite taken aback by it. The strangeness was difficult to ignore. It was truly someone else’s hand that she failed to resurrect any image of Dakota in her mind.

Even with her eyes shut, all she could picture was his eyes looming over her. A pair of eyes she could never tell the colour. Whether it was shades of golden or brown. It never bothered her because what mattered was the absorbing intensity that was all way too familiar.

This time, his gaze had turned cold. The last time she looked at him in his eyes back in the Elysium, the Beast was lurking behind his irises as she was revealing all the dirty secrets to seal her position for good. It was a dark and destructive flame burning down the last remains of care inside him.

Somehow, the thought made her blue. But she couldn’t afford to be blue, could she? This power was everything she had longed for a long time. It was not like she was ever happy as a human or a Kindred “immigration officer”. Qadir was always a stick in the mud who was never-endingly harsh on her.

Dakota... She didn’t want to reignite any lingering memories of her. Their relationship had met their doom before that life-turning night. She couldn’t picture any possibility of reconciliation.

Well, all had been left in the past. She was already dead. Qadir had taken care of her.

After the eyeshadow was done, he applied rather thin eyeliner on both eyes before he added the final touch. She could feel mascara dabbing both of her lashes, then voila.

“It’s not exactly your usual look, but it will do. Shame you couldn’t see yourself,”

”Time to go, we couldn’t waste more time.”

_Bet he is smug of his work._

“Thank you… Qadir.”

She couldn’t remember whether she had ever thanked him before. She sounded tentative as if she was swallowing some kind of pride. Fuck, she suddenly sounded more vulnerable even. Gaining her stoic composure, she rose from her seat, willing to go.

Qadir followed her from behind, but he suddenly paused his steps.

“Do you want to know what happened to Dakota?”

Silence. A pause on her steps.

“No, I’m not interested.”

On their way to the Elysium in his Cadillac, they were trapped in a slow traffic jam. The rain was heavy; it sounded like a loud, somber cry to his ears somehow. As the car was stopping because of the red light, he watched the rain pouring on the windshield, working to distract himself from catching glances of her at the backseat.

But his mind was led to her no matter how hard he tried. When he looked at her in her eyes after he was finished with her face, it dawned upon him how there used to be a fire inside keeping her driven, and it had grown into an inferno. And one day, it would consume the remains of her humanity that were already dwindling. Sometimes, he believed it had when she blackmailed the inner circle and agreed to Dakota’s death to secure her Primogen status, but he preferred to be in denial.

He didn’t understand why he felt dejected when it had been expected since the beginning. Once provided the taste of power, she would be drunk and unstoppable just like many others before her who played the rigged game of Kindred politics. Then the cycle of corruption repeats. It never ends, it always happens to the people he cared about.

Maybe, it was the tingle of the blame on himself for having failed to keep her checked, the wrench of guilt for having been complicit to maintain order. However, he didn’t blame her for revealing the dirty truth. He couldn’t.

He glanced at the rear-view mirror and saw her gazing at the outside view, appearing bored with the city shining on her face.

For a moment, all he wished was for the traffic jam to never stop, for the Court to never come.


End file.
